Bell Semiconductor LLC v. Western Digital Technologies, Inc. DC

Recent months have seen Bell Semiconductor, LLC (Bell Semic) file an ongoing flood of litigation targeting chipmakers over semiconductor products made using Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools from Cadence Design Systems, Synopsys, and/or Siemens. Now, Cadence and Synopsys have responded with a jointly filed declaratory judgment complaint against Bell Semic (1:22-cv-01512), seeking a judgment of noninfringement and invalidity for six semiconductor design patents asserted against their customers throughout the plaintiff’s “sprawling” campaign. Meanwhile, Bell Semic has continued to pile up new complaints throughout November since suing Silicon Laboratories on the first, filing additional complaints against Ambarella (3:22-cv-00323), Analog Devices (1:22-cv-11901), Infineon (1:22-cv-11926), Marvell (4:22-cv-11906), NVIDIA (1:22-cv-11933), NXP (3:22-cv-01794), Qualcomm (3:22-cv-01796), Rockchip Electronics (4:22-cv-00962), Socionext (2:22-cv-12749), and Western Digital (8:22-cv-02083)—each of which has been sued by Bell Semic before.

A barrage of litigation by Bell Semiconductor, LLC (Bell Semic) persisted throughout October, the Hilco Inc. (d/b/a Hilco Global) company filing dozens of district court suits as well as two complaints before the International Trade Commission (ITC), all over patents received from Broadcom. Whether that pace will continue in November remains to be seen, although the plaintiff has already opened the month with a new suit against Silicon Laboratories—a defendant against which the NPE now has four open cases, all in the Western District of Texas.

Additional complaints filed by Bell Semiconductor, LLC (“Bell Semic”) dropped over the past week, the plaintiff hitting existing defendants AMD (1:22-cv-11783), ams-Osram (2:22-cv-12518), KIOXIA (2:22-cv-01880), MACOM Technology (1:22-cv-11788), Micron Technology (1:22-cv-00438), and Sequans Communications (0:22-cv-02660) over the provision of various semiconductor devices that are manufactured using certain design tools. Bell Semic, a Hilco Inc. (d/b/a Hilco Global) company, has targeted a wide variety of devices across its ever-growing litigation over a large portfolio of patents received from Broadcom.

Bell Semiconductor, LLC (Bell Semic) keeps filing new complaints asserting patents from its large portfolio of patents, most of which were acquired from Broadcom in December 2017. This past week saw the plaintiff— one of two assertion vehicles, to date, operating under the umbrella of Hilco Inc. (d/b/a Hilco Global), a financial services conglomerate based in Chicago that owns a broad range of companies—file a dozen additional cases in district court, as well as a complaint before the International Trade Commission (ITC), in the latter pleading the presence of a domestic industry based on the US activities of Broadcom.

Bell Semiconductor, LLC (Bell Semic) has expanded its second litigation campaign over patents acquired from Broadcom with suits against Ambarella (3:22-cv-00273), Ampere Computing (3:22-cv-01435), ASMedia Technology (1:22-cv-08166), Lattice Semiconductor (3:22-cv-01437), Phison Electronics (1:22-cv-02485), Rockchip Electronics (4:22-cv-00819), and Sequans Communications (0:22-cv-02344) filed in various districts. The asserted patents generally relate to inserting dummy fill into a circuit design, with the defendants accused of infringement through the provision of semiconductor devices that are manufactured using certain design tools provided by Cadence, Synopsys, and/or Siemens.